A jobs rich, $190 million timber mill looks set to go ahead at Hampshire. The Hermal Group’s plantation hardwood mill and timber product manufacturing facility is expected to employ about 200 people when it is fully operational. “It is true we have selected the site, but I can’t give you any details about the site at this stage,” Hermal Group senior manager of special projects James Lantry said. The company is believed to have considered a range of sites in the Burnie area. There have been signs of activity at the expected Hampshire site. Hampshire would make sense because of its proximity to Forico’s timber resource. Choosing it would also avoid the potential difficulties of constructing and running an industrial operation in or near a heavily populated area. Forico, Tasmania’s biggest private forestry management company, will supply most of the timber for the mill. Forico took over some of the assets of failed Tasmanian timber giant Gunns Limited. Hampshire was one of two areas Gunns considered for its controversial pulp mill. It settled on a site near the Tamar River instead, but Gunns collapsed and the mill never went ahead. The Melbourne-based Hermal Group announced in January it would go ahead with its timber mill somewhere in the Burnie area. It said the project would involve Australia’s biggest “sustainable plantation-based hardwood mill” and the nation’s biggest hardwood timber products manufacturing plant. It said Tasmania had Australia’s biggest commercial plantations of hardwood eucalyptus. Construction was expected to start later this year and to be complete by about mid-2020. The mill would be a significant economic boost for Burnie and the wider region. Unlike the booming South and the strengthening North, the North-West and West Coast combined have had net job losses in recent times. The North-West and West Coast averaged 1400 fewer jobs per month in the year to the end of March, compared to the previous year. Original terms data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed jobs growth of 2800 in the North and 6300 in the South on the same measure. In January, Resources Minister Guy Barnett predicted the Hermal Group’s mill would create jobs and economic benefits across the state and across the forest industry. As well as jobs at the mill, it would also create work in harvesting and haulage. Premier Will Hodgman described the project as “an absolute game changer” for the North-West and the North.